Traditional furniture has been used to furnish homes, offices and condos for countless years. Traditional furniture is made in a number of different styles, using a variety of materials and finished with a variety of surface finishes. One common feature of traditional furniture, however, is that it comes completely assembled from the furniture manufacturer, and once the item of furniture has been made, it can not be otherwise modified or tailored to suit the purchaser or the environment in which it is to be used.
As an alternative to pre-finished manufactured “traditional” furniture, many consumers have purchased unfinished furniture or unfinished furniture kits. In these unfinished furniture kits, all the necessary pieces of furniture are provided to assemble a piece of furniture, whereupon the consumer finishes the furniture itself. However, although unfinished furniture kits have become a popular and usually less expensive alternative to traditional furniture, the problem remains that even these furniture kits are only constructed to form traditional pieces of furniture once assembled, and do not allow for any degree of flexibility in assembly, or the ability to be readily modified into other pieces of furniture for use in a house, condo, office or other environment.
In an effort to provide more flexibility in furniture, some manufacturers have provided shelving units, such a metal shelving units, which can be assembled in a variety of shelving configurations. Others have used, for example, “egg” crates, or “milk” crates. These crates have been typically used in conjunction with standard wooden planks to form fixed shelving units. These “crate” arrangements have very limited configuration flexibility and are not readily adapted for use as more traditional pieces of furniture, such as, chairs, tables, benches, and the like.
What is needed, therefore, but seemingly unavailable in the art is a modular furniture system that can be used for fashioning a large variety of furniture pieces which can be used throughout the house or office to include shelves, tables, chairs, benches, lamps, plant stands. The use of the modular furniture system of the present invention includes, but is not limited to, bedroom furniture such as beds, end tables, benches, night stands, vanities and the like. Another use is as office furniture to include desks, credenzas, and other pieces of furniture. Moreover, what is needed is a modular furniture system which is easy to assemble, inexpensive to purchase, highly flexible, but yet is available in a variety of finishes, textures and/or patterns for use in an extremely wide variety of applications throughout the home, the office, as well as in schools, churches, pre-schools, and any other facility in which furniture is needed.